Trash post please ignore. (December 07, 2016)

One of the hardest things I’ve found about writing, after all this time attempting to maintaining this blog, is that I would only ever get things done if I started on them. And I try not to get started until I have a firm idea of what exactly I’m starting. In terms of writing anime posts, this usually comes in the form of several questions:

Which anime am I writing about?

What exactly am I writing about this anime for?

Do I already have my introduction, body paragraphs, and snappy conclusion ready to go so that I don’t end up stone-faced in front of an empty draft page for three hours before queuing up for a LoL game and forgetting about writing altogether?

Now that I’ve thoroughly demoralized myself, am I even writing anything worth a damn?

Needless to say, I get stuck on that third part. Like most things that are complicated, I feel that my motivation issues stem from similarly complicated sources. Is it because I’m lazy? Am I just immature and don’t understand how hard work, well, works? Have I not been disciplining myself enough to cultivate a consistent life schedule that I can follow without worry? Or is it because I’ve had a particular medical condition that’s gone undiagnosed until literally a week ago where essentially I uncontrollably space out on a daily basis and that can last between a few seconds and a few minutes and I have no awareness that I’m having an episode and that this has been the main reason why I’ve been so bad at playing out this whole life thing and sabotaged my own future?

At this point I still think it’s a mixture of all the above. It’s wrong. It’s unfair. But it’s what I think. Maybe I should be a bit clearer about what I mean.

A month of brain scans and blood tests finally wrapped up about a week ago, almost a month and a half since my seizure at Fullerton. I’m told before my appointment via voicemail that my EEG scans are “very abnormal”. Essentially meaning, my brainwaves are fucked up and they’ve been fucked up for a long time. The neurologist tells me that I have what is called absence seizures, a condition that’s mostly attributed to children. You know how kids are prone to spacing out and not paying attention in class? Well, you could attribute that to normal daydreaming like every other rational person on the planet. Or, if you’re paranoid enough to actually get brain scans done on a kid who was possibly just daydreaming, you would correctly identify that the child has been having miniature seizures and it’s preventing them from functioning well in class. The Epilepsy Foundation’s website states that 7 out of 10 kids grow out of absence seizures once they hit adulthood. I seem to be in the 30%. I’m essentially still a kid. I’m 23, sure, but I’m definitely still a kid thanks to having this condition. I’m pretty sure that’s how the logic works.

Being a legal adult hasn’t treated me very kindly thus far, even though I’ve always wanted to be one. I can’t drive, drink alcohol or do drugs thanks to my brain (I’ve never enjoyed drinking anyways, I get the Asian flush very easily), I haven’t been able to land a good job, and I’m not even out of school yet. Ever since the seizure happened, I feel like my life has been put on pause. Suddenly, I can’t get anywhere by myself. The DMV suspends your license once the hospital reports your seizure, so my car has been sitting outside of the house with no immediate or legal purpose. I’ve been wondering why I’ve never been looking out my window lately, now that I think about it.

Where am I even going with this? Hm. I think I’m just trying to say that it just feels hard for me to process this. Dropping out of university and having a seizure that takes away your independence is definitely not the way I wanted to live my life. Sure, I’m now taking classes at the local junior college so that I can finally get back on track after three or four years of loafing around doing nothing, but the fact that I’m “back on track” doesn’t make me feel any better about what I’ve been doing to myself. Was it even my own fault, though? These seizure things seem to happen regardless of whether I’m aware of their existence, and would explain a lot about how I’ve behaved my whole life, losing track of my spatial position, not remembering short-term stuff, being bad at school. You know, things you’d normally attribute to lazy pieces of shit. Or minorities that aren’t Asian. Basically, literally anyone on this side of the U.S. that isn’t me or the ethnicity I share.

I don’t even know why I’m still so down on myself. I thought that learning about this condition would actually make me feel better. My 12th grade English teacher during a parent teacher conference, years before I would learn anything about my mental condition and years into a long history of failing academics, once suggested outright that I was, for some nebulous purpose, sabotaging my grades.Like I was actively trying to ruin myself for some inhumane purpose that inherently cannot be understood by human minds.

“You’re failing school? That’s too bad. If only you had worked harder like the rest of your peers you could have been at Yale University doing a double Masters in Being an Astronaut and Being the President but now that you are on the verge of failing the 12th grade you are now doomed to work in McDonalds flipping burgers the rest of your fucking life.”

My mistake was buying into that mentality. That some sort of college prep “fast track” existed for anyone who had the money and drive to latch onto the rails and ride their way to unlimited financial stability. Heaven, I suppose. The image that was being sold to me about what happened after getting a degree in a good college was essentially heaven on Earth. Perhaps I didn’t have any other reference to go on. Both my parents graduated with a masters from their respective universities, so they definitely believed that whatever worked for them in their time was going to work for me. My extended family was no different, either. So I totally believed that, whenever anything bad happened to me, it could not have possibly been anyone’s fault other than my own.

I want to be done with that kind of thinking. But it’s hard. It’s so fucking hard. I was supposed to be relieved. I can finally put a medical term to the pain I’ve caused myself for my whole academic career. I have the proper pills now. Sure, I haven’t had any immediate effects so far, but it sure as hell helps that I know what to call it, right? How are all my high school friends doing? Hell, how are my college friends doing LUL? Are they having fun? I’m sure they are. They graduated. They’re on the fast track. Now that I’m in this hole all by myself, I have no right to think about being as happy as I imagine my friends to be, if their Facebook photos indicate anything close to the truth. Who cares if that’s not how the facts work out? Fuck it, who even cares about facts these days? All that really matters is that I feel like a piece of shit and no amount of fact-checking my privilege is going to make me any happier than I currently deserve to be.

That came out a lot darker than I intended.

So,

I’ve been at an impasse, to put it in words, about what I want to do with this blog, and what exactly I should be writing about. Because any anime criticism I can muster these days ends up being eaten on Twitter as woefully undercooked thinkpieces. I want to continue writing creatively with the monologues. I want to talk personal about anime and my life whenever I get the chance. Sometime, I’ll finally get back to the original purpose of this blog: a comprehensive, coherent interpretation of Xam’d: Lost Memories that would do its second half justice. But I can’t find it in myself to write about those sorts of things when I’m feeling this bad about myself. It feels as though I don’t deserve to have these kinds of thoughts. Like I didn’t earn any of it or something. I don’t know when I’ll be able to quit thinking this way. I hate that I’m so aware of it. But I can’t stop. Not yet. I won’t be able to write normally as long as I think like this.

But I still do want to write. I definitely signed up for Anime Secret Santa for that express purpose. I definitely have 12 Days of Anime on my mind because I want to write. And certainly, my recent attempts at journalizing my activities, like, on an actual notebook, warrants the justification that I should extend such activities online, since that’s where I usually reside most of the day.

There could have been a lot of other things I could have written about today. Like how Sound! Euphonium’s most recent arc speaks to me on multiple spiritual levels with its sibling dialogue and parental expectations and pretending to be an adult when you’re not. Or perhaps how I’ve become a lot more open about liking that gay shit this season and what that could possibly say about me. But I don’t feel like writing about that today.

So here. Have this. Once you get to know me personally you’ll understand that I’m really not as dour and hopeless as I think I’m coming off as right now, so try not to worry too much about my well-being. I won’t say that you shouldn’t worry, because that’s an instinctual thing and thus very hard to control, but if I’m saying that I’ll be okay, then it could possibly follow that things are pretty okay with me right now.

Addendum

This is going to be my personal reminder as to what I plan to write about for the month of December:

Secret Santa review of Rozen Maiden (2013), Moon Phase, and Arietty.

12 Days of Anime featuring:

Euphonium

Amanchu

Flying Witch

Mob Psycho 100

Erased

Art Club

Kuromukuro

Concrete Revolutio

Snow White with the Red Hair

Garakowa

Kiznaiver

Anthem of the Heart

(Yeah not YOI or Re:Zero or Luluco or even Rakugo because I can’t think of anything worthwhile to say about those right now)

Something, anything, just to have for tomorrow.

No, seriously, write anything. Write about your pokemon. About league. About how your life isn’t actually in the shitter and you’re being a dramatic thundercan’t about it. Life isn’t as shitty as you think it is. Just write.